[color=ec008c]"I will always be yours."[/color]

Arn smiled at the words.  To him, who had little of value except his two swords and the melted locked of his mother, the words held a much deeper meaning.  It somehow felt like they anchored him.  Despite his stoic and always controlled behavior, when he was not in battle or performing some official duty, he felt aimless.  He could only imagine what the broken pieces of Ith may feel if the Sorcerer King had been more successful when he caused the moons to fall. 

The words rang in his soul like a vibrant pure bell.  The sound made him feel even more warmth emanate from him.  Yet as the wave propagated and it reached deeper into his connection with Eilis it changed and distorted become dissonant.  The sour note then travelled back to him. 

[color=9e0039]"I will always be yours."[/color]

This time, an uneasy feeling began to nag at him.  The voice, though belonging to Eilis was distorted.  The image of her bathed in magical power and sheeting of pure raw passion came to mind.  The words of the dark-haired witch also echoed in his mind.  She belonged to another.  Even if unwilling, a part or the whole of his lovely protégé was bound and feed another. 

The Master Mage tightened his grip on the small frame of the lovely girl.  He held on protective, jealously.  He would not share her.  Eilis was his.  She belonged with him and to him. 

He loosened up his grip a bit.  Where had this sentiment come from?  Was it from a place of innocence and need of connection that had been missing in his life since the passing of his mother?  Or was it from the recent crack in his armor that lusted after the power he had witnessed?

Logically speaking, Eilis was an invaluable magical mystery that needed to be studied.  The near miraculous extent of that power boggled the mind and inspired.  In the hands of either the Empire of the Kingdom she would be a formidable weapon.  It was his duty as a member of the Belesian military to gain control of this power and use to end the current invasion. 

Emotionally speaking, the girl was a piece of his life that he had always know it was missing.  The void that his mother had left, the need to feel connected, had been slowly devouring him.  To the point that he had even considered acknowledging the advances of the women who had shown interest in him.  A few might have actually loved him.  However, there had been no connection.  Not in the way that he now had with Eilis.  It pulled at him like a magnet.  As if their meetingn was inevitable and had always meant to be. 

He looked down at her.  She snuggled against him.  Her form nestled against him and his body.  His arms, while not big in musculature, still seemed to be enough to cover her.  To any onlooker, it would seem that the pair were indeed affianced.  The fact that this was only a ruse that may soon be discovered when the dawn came, made Arn feel a little sad.  

His feelings confused him.  The webbed and eddied like the flow of a river.  It was the white rapids that he could handle for some reason.  The violent tossing of his feelings allowed him to concentrate on their control and made him feel in control.  It was the calm and lazy areas, the deeply deep pools that can engulf you and drown you that scared him. 

When he looked into the mirror surface of his feelings, he could see his face reflected.  But then, a shimmer later, it was as if a completely different person was looking back.  A person he did not know, a person who he felt he should know and who knew him very well.  

The battlemage used on of his hands to brush the hair of his lady.  He needed her anchoring.  He sighed, his chest expanding and contracting against the pressure of her head.  Arn could smell her scent as his hand continued to slowly and carefully ding his fingers in her hair.  The motion and his easy breathing became rhythmic. 

Slowly, he returned to his meditative state.  He let his body step into the pool of his emotions that connected him to the Aether.  The Thread felt different.  It was as if for the first time, he was actually connecting with it in a deeper level.  The power around him pulsed alive.  He stood in the brilliant Thread as if in a river.  The flow of it was strong and he soon found that it was flowing towards Eilis.  

Arn followed the flow.  He needed to find a way to exploit their connection, enhance it.  Perhaps in this way he could either sever the connection with the other person or completely cleanse his lady from the necrotic touch of the black tendrils.  

He arrived at the edge of her Thread.  Nothing he had experienced so far could prepare him for what was ahead.  So he forged on unto dawn.